Cleartext is a text editor that only lets you use the 1000 most common words in English

[renke]

I have one saying*

 this shirt
intentionally
 left blank

[peemlives]

@AnthonyC

Side-note: As awesome and brilliant and useful as Thing Explainer is, I think geology and rocket science and anatomy are actually the easy fields of science for that kind of project because the items and ideas in question are at least a little bit familiar to most readers; we’ve encountered them at some point in some form in real life. I wonder if you could do the same with cell biology or abstract math.

I’ve thought about it, and quite a bit of current scientific nomenclature is Greek / Latin thing explainer, e.g. myrmecologist “this person writes about ants”, mathematics “a system of lessons”.

[zathras]

@AnthonyC

A lot of what I do involves explaining things to non-technical, non-native-English-speaking audiences.

If your non-native-English-speaking audiences are speaking European languages, the definition of what a “big word” is will be skewed. After a little over a year of learning French at school, I was able to dazzle my French exchange partner by using big words like “électrocardiogramme”. Look at the wikipedia article for that word: it’s almost the same in 9 out of 10 languages.

@Boundegar

It’s fun to click through the last link to the hate mail. Lots of people seemed genuinely offended by this free little bit of software.

Well, I don’t see the “hate” in that hate mail, but I can understand people being offended.

This particular bit of software, of course, can be seen as nothing but a nice experiment along the lines of the Thing Explainer, and as such it is entirely unoffensive. What people take exception to is not the software itself, but the narrative of “everyone should only use simple words” that it is somehow vaguely related to. That narrative is what’s getting people riled up.

Language is an art. Sometimes, you want beauty on top of simple information transfer. Sometimes, you want to transfer more information. And, language is culture. Lots of little references to cultural traditions. Language is identity.
Attack somebody’s identity, and they will be offended.

@TimmoWarner

Nobody in the hate mail or these comments has mentioned the main use, which to me would be seeing if you can explain things simply yourself. You don’t have to use those words with other people, but you’ll discover if you are using big words to skip over things you don’t actually understand completely.

Complex terms are often shorthand for thoughts that you don’t want to repeat. Most of the time, when you communicate with someone who is aware of the same terms, you do not want to start with defining the basics.

[jerwin]

from that article

What the World needs most is about 1,000 more dead languages – and one more alive.

— C. K. Ogden, The System of Basic English

which is a horrible thought.

[AnthonyC]

@zathras

If your non-native-English-speaking audiences are speaking European languages, the definition of what a “big word” is will be skewed.

Yes, those are the easy ones. It’s the clients in Japan and, to a lesser extent, Korea and China where it can be difficult.

@peemlives

I’ve thought about it, and quite a bit of current scientific nomenclature is Greek / Latin thing explainer, e.g. myrmecologist “this person writes about ants”, mathematics “a system of lessons”.

Right. But can we talk about the content of myrmecology that way as well, such that every other term doesn’t have the same explanation, or not? Ditto, mathematics, except in math the terms themselves are usually relatively simple words like “category,” “map,” “space,” and “group,” that mean totally different things than usual.

[jerwin]

Compare

Basic English

with

Basic English

Take note of what’s missing.

[Boundegar]

@zathras

What people take exception to is not the software itself, but the narrative of “everyone should only use simple words” that it is somehow vaguely related to.

The author of the software has never said that, so they’re reacting to something nobody is saying. Not that that’s unusual - it’s the way people argue past each other all the time. Maybe they had an English teacher who was a Hemingway fan and they’re still traumatized.

[zathras]

@Boundegar

The author of the software has never said that

… which is why I chose the words “somehow vaguely related to” :-).

@Boundegar

so they’re reacting to something nobody is saying. Not that that’s unusual - it’s the way people argue past each other all the time. Maybe they had an English teacher who was a Hemingway fan and they’re still traumatized.

Sounds like a non sequitur. “He has never said it, so nobody is saying it”.
The idea that people who use “big” words are trying to “look smart” and are trying to obfuscate, and that “good writing” involves using simple words and avoiding passive voice or nested sentence structures seems pretty widespread to me.

[OtherMichael]

#THIS IS NOT A TEXT 

[cjankelson]

It’s the other way around. After “up-goer five” came out, more than one website was set up which checks your input for words not in the most common 1000 English words. This app is just a standalone publication of the code on those sites.

[popobawa4u]

My experience has been that using a small subset of purportedly common words does not truly simplify much communication. Basically, it accurately conveys what were already simple concepts. Otherwise, it seems like I imagine trying to live with a lobotomy would be.

I have had some hardcore reductionists apply this technique with me, either in person or online. The idea seems to be that one can swap out anything I say which seems awkward with synonyms, and that this leaves my meanings unchanged. It has hardly ever been accurate. Choosing words or phrases with different connotations often changes at least the flavor, if not the basic meaning, of what I am trying to communicate. I am happy enough to explain this, because providing such background for how I put my thoughts into language could help to further understanding. But it often regresses into their deliberate misrepresentation for rhetorical purposes, or that meaning is a lost cause because we are “only talking about words”.

I like simplicity, but I despise forced over-simplification.

[peemlives]

@AnthonyC

Ditto, mathematics, except in math the terms themselves are usually relatively simple words like “category,” “map,” “space,” and “group,” that mean totally different things than usual.

Or they’re opaque things like “Delta Time”, which makes zilch sense to the uninitiated.

Just look at all this nonsense.

[anon29631895]

This text is not representative of the writer’s opinion.

[peemlives]

Whoops, I meant to find this nonsense:

Greek letters used in mathematics, science, and engineering

[zathras]

Horrible thought indeed.

This requires a counter-quote:

How many languages you know - that many times you are a person.

I tried to find a source for this, and ran into the problem that was first observed by Abraham Lincoln: that 80% of all quotes on the internet are made up, or at least misattributed. I found three different German versions attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a czech version attributed to Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and an Ukrainian version attributed to Pavlo Tychyna, among many others with no name attached to them.

[jerwin]

http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/mathematical-notation-past-future/

[chenille]

@Person who starts many games

So much preferable to deploy an assiduously accumulated lexicon of ingenious esoteric phrases in a quixotic quest for terminal terminological interpersonal transmissions rending one’s content unaccountably unfathomable.

That genuinely took me much less effort and headache to understand than it does to figure out what any of the labels in Thing Explorer are clearly describing. Maybe I’ve lost track of the difference between dumbing down and dumbing up.

Thinking about this I wanted to add a little bit more. The above is of course dense but I can understand it because I actually do recognize all the words. I guess people imagine the sort of language allowed by Cleartext, where everyone can recognize the words, should then be even more accessible.

But I thought Thing Explainer really demonstrated the exact opposite. In order to use only the most common words, even moderately common nouns get replaced by unusual new noun phrases. Intestine becomes “food hallway”. Enzyme becomes “death water”. Hydrogen becomes “sky bag air”, because it was used in that one famous sky bag. All new unfamiliar jargon to learn at every step.

It makes for a cute bit and, as nemomen says, it’s probably good fun to play around with. But I’m surprised to see so many people interpreted it as any kind of clarity or simplicity, good or bad, when to me it was more like writing in rebuses or crossword puzzle clues.

[Indubitably]

I totally read that, bruh.

[TimmoWarner]

That’s why I said it can be a good tool for yourself and NOT necessarily for communicating with other people.

[L_Mariachi]

Or a T. Coraghessan Boyle novel.